Except That Little Closet
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: Dark fic, gen. Draco is convinced that his mother was murdered, though the official verdict is suicide. He persuades disgraced Auror Harry Potter to investigate. But the longer he does so, the more uneasy Harry is about the strange stories Draco is telling him- and about the little room that is always kept locked. Twoshot. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Except That Little Closet  
 **Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.  
 **Content Notes:** Horror, dark themes, character death, suggestions of suicide, mystery, angst, bittersweet ending  
 **Rating:** PG-13  
 **Pairing:** None, gen  
 **Wordcount:** This part 4500  
 **Summary:** Draco Malfoy is convinced that his mother has been murdered, not committed suicide, the way the Aurors have decided. He demands that Harry Potter, disgraced Auror, help him investigate to prove it and catch her killer. But the longer Harry and Draco investigate Malfoy Manor, the more Harry becomes uneasily aware that there is something strange about the stories Draco is telling him—and the little room that's always kept locked.  
 **Author's Notes:** This is the first part of a two-shot fic in my "From Samhain to the Solstice" series. The title, which comes from an English translation of Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard," uses "closet" in the old sense of a small private space that's not to be disturbed.

 **Except That Little Closet**

"Potter."

Harry started as he looked up from the book on curses open on his desk. "Jesus, Malfoy, how did you get in here?"

"Through the door?" Draco Malfoy took a step forwards. He looked even paler than he had the last time Harry had seen him, which was at his father's funeral. Lucius Malfoy had died in Azkaban for a killing he committed _after_ the war, and Harry had attended his funeral for lots of complicated reasons. "I need your help with my mother."

"I thought your mother had died, too?" Harry tried to keep his voice as soft as he could. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to lose both parents after you already knew them, the way Malfoy had.

"The Aurors said she committed suicide."

"Said?"

"She was murdered."

Harry blinked several times. Then he nodded to the chair in front of his desk. "Sit down, Malfoy. It sounds like we have some things to talk about."

Malfoy ignored the invitation, pacing back and forth in front of Harry's desk instead. "They said she didn't have anything to live for, with my father gone. They said she jumped over the balcony in the front of Malfoy Manor, the one that—there's a bamboo fence below. They said it. But she would _never_ have done that! She would have lived for me, if nothing else."

After thinking about the way that Narcissa had lied to Voldemort just to ask about her son, Harry had to admit that he thought that, too. "What proof do you have that it was murder?"

Malfoy whirled to face him. "Because she wouldn't have jumped!"

"No, I mean, what proof do you have that it wasn't an accident? That she didn't just fall?"

Malfoy lowered his head. For an instant, he actually seemed to dim, as if some internal light burning in him had gone out. Harry blinked, but kept his gaze as steady and compassionate as he could. He had to ask those questions, as a trained Auror.

Even though he wasn't really an Auror now. Which brought him back to the other problem with Malfoy asking for his help.

"I suppose—I don't know that for certain." Malfoy's voice was a thing of torment that made Harry wince to listen to. "But I want someone who will tell me. Someone who won't decide that because she was the wife and mother of Marked Death Eaters, she doesn't deserve justice."

"Okay. But you should know that I'm not your best choice for that. I did terrible things, Malfoy. I'm not an acknowledged Auror anymore. They would have forced me to retire, but there were a few people who pulled strings in my favor."

Malfoy seemed to glance up and around for the first time, as if really noticing where Harry's office was, relative to the rest of the Ministry. "Thus the office in the cellars?"

"Instead of the DMLE, yes. So. Why come to me? There are other people who have a lot more clout. And some of them might still owe your family favors."

"They wouldn't listen to me. Not the way _you_ will. They might pretend to indulge me, but they would look into the official files and at the balcony where she died and then shrug and tell me that yes, it was suicide. Or an accident. You owed us debts, Potter. You testified for us at trial. You'll do this."

Harry grunted in irritation. "Do you even know what I was disgraced for? What kinds of terrible things I did?"

"So long as it wasn't pushing my mother off a balcony, Potter, I don't care."

Harry held Malfoy's eyes. "I suspect you might have come to me _because_ of the terrible things I did. Let me make this clear, Malfoy. I'm not casting the Retrocognition Curse ever again."

"Curse? I thought it was just a spell."

"It has a curse attached. It always caused pain and death for whoever asked me to use it. I didn't know that when I invented the spell."

"You think I'm afraid of pain or death, Potter? I'm not afraid of _anything_ next to my fear of not bringing my mother's killer to justice."

Harry rolled his eyes. "You say that, but you don't know what happened to the victims of the curse. One woman I showed her husband's death to committed suicide the next day." Malfoy turned away and stared at the far wall. Harry went on. "Another man who insisted that I show him how his child was tortured at the hands of Death Eaters tried to kill them, and now he's in Azkaban. Then there was Lavender Brown."

"Brown? I thought she died at the Battle of Hogwarts."

Harry smiled bitterly. "So did I. But she showed up at the Ministry one day, declaring that she'd been bitten by Greyback and she was in hiding from the Ministry until they captured him. And because we don't treat werewolves properly. I showed her the scene of Greyback biting her; she wanted to be sure that he'd really done it instead of another werewolf. The next day, she disappeared. No one could find a trace of her."

"That doesn't mean a curse took her. Maybe she just decided to hide again because of how much the Ministry dislikes werewolves."

"We did find the cottage in the woods where she'd stayed all these years. There was blood on the walls and the sheets were torn up."

Malfoy hesitated. "All right, that does sound bad—"

"You see?"

"But what harm can your curse do to my mother, Potter? She's already dead."

Harry shook his head wearily. "It could still do something to _you_. I'm not going to use that spell ever again. Obviously I should have spent more time researching the magical theory behind it before I invented it."

Malfoy rolled his eyes n turn. "I'm not asking for such a huge favor, Potter. Avoid using the stupid spell if you want to. But come to Malfoy Manor for me. Investigate and see if you can find a trace of the murderer."

"Your mother died months ago, Malfoy. There won't be traces left to find. Besides, I'm sure the Aurors in the first investigation would have covered—"

"The investigation that claimed my mother _committed suicide_ when I know there was someone else living in the Manor?"

Harry paused. "There was someone else living in the Manor?"

Malfoy nodded fervently, his eyes blazing in a way that almost made Harry think he could see straight through them into his brain. "I tried to tell the Aurors on the first investigation that, that I found the signs. They ignored me. It was like they couldn't hear me, couldn't see me." He smiled bitterly. "You know, the way they've always treated Malfoys since my father died."

Harry didn't know, actually. Being exiled to what was almost a cellar office in the Ministry kept him away from a lot of department gossip. But he stood up. "That sounds like something worth looking into."

"You'll do it, then?" Malfoy sounded as if he was holding his breath.

"Yes. But I make no promises, Malfoy. It's possible that I won't find anything because there's nothing to find, or because the murderer, if there was one, covered their tracks too well. And I'm _not_ using the Retrocognition Curse."

Malfoy reached out as if he would take Harry's hand, then seemed to remember himself and pulled his hand back. "Thank you, Potter. Thank you. I promise, you won't lack for repayment."

Harry gave him an uncomfortable smile. He was essentially paid a Ministry salary for _not_ involving himself in investigations now. He would have to keep this as secretive as possible. "Let's go and see what we can find, Malfoy."

* * *

Harry shuddered instinctively at his first sight of Malfoy Manor in years. It seemed to hunch behind the gate, staring at him in the way of a predator creeping through tall grass. In fact, the grass around it _was_ tall. Harry stared back. Then he looked at Malfoy. "You don't have house-elves to take care of this place anymore?"

Malfoy shook his head in silence, staring at the looming marble walls. "My mother was already losing some of them. She didn't have Malfoy blood, and after my father died…I could have lived here and kept them with me. But I didn't want to."

Harry felt his heart clutch in sympathy. The pain in Malfoy's voice scraped down Harry's own back. He reached out to touch his shoulder.

Malfoy moved away in what probably would have looked like a casual step to Harry a few years ago, and cleared his throat. "Are we going to go in?"

"Yes," Harry said slowly. He didn't think Malfoy had meant to snub him. Maybe he just really didn't like being touched. "As soon as you open the gates. Or is there a key phrase or something that's supposed to open them?"

Malfoy closed his eyes for a second, as if he was trying to remember it. Then his brow furrowed, and he turned his head away. Harry had just opened his mouth to ask if there was another way in when the gates creaked softly open.

"Er, well, that's good, I suppose," Harry said. Malfoy just ducked his head and walked slowly into the house. Harry shook his head and followed. He knew it had to be hard for Malfoy to come back to this place, he scolded himself.

Of course, the scolding also helped to distract him from the way _his_ heart was bounding and the way his ears seemed to echo with Hermione's scream as Bellatrix tortured her.

The spiraling gravel path that led up to the house hadn't been raked or smoothed in what looked like years. Harry glanced around, disquieted. It was more than the tall grass and the utter lack of white peacocks. There was a silence here that shouldn't be.

Which was ridiculous, when the grass was swaying to the push of the wind and wild birds called from the nearby trees. But he felt that way anyway.

Malfoy came to a halt in front of the Manor's door. He stared at it and shivered. Harry looked with him, and saw that the silver knocker was in the shape of a curling serpent, eating its own tail.

 _He saw Nagini devour people, didn't he?_ Harry cleared his throat. "I can open the door if you tell me the phrase or the spell that you need to use."

"Thank you, Potter," Malfoy whispered, his voice shaking. "Can you say _Purus sanguis_?"

 _If it's just a phrase, why can't he say it…?_ But Harry had learned not to second-guess other people's trauma, if possible, and if only so they wouldn't second-guess his own. He murmured, " _Purus sanguis_."

The silence stirred at his words, broken both by them and by the noise of the door as it swung open on silken-smooth hinges. Harry told himself that it was ridiculous to think something was listening, displeased by the breaking of the silence. He stepped forwards aggressively.

The house was dark and dusty. Harry cast a few spells to remove the dust, looking around. He couldn't remember enough of the front corridors when he'd been dragged through them by the Snatchers to say for sure if much had changed. He did see portraits with closed eyes on the walls, and a door standing ajar that, from the glimpse of books he got beyond it, probably led into a small library.

"What makes you think a murderer was living here?" he asked, turning to face Malfoy.

Malfoy stood with his arms wrapped around himself, his head bowed. He again appeared as if his fire had dimmed, the way he had in the office. Harry added softly, "I'm still going to help you. I just need the evidence, that's all."

He would have reached out, but he'd seen already that Malfoy didn't like being touched.

After a second, Malfoy nodded and summoned back the fire in him from wherever it had been hiding. "All right. Let me show you." He turned and led Harry up a staircase. Harry kept his wand drawn and eyed the sleek banisters and smooth steps uneasily. He'd have to fight in this slick place. Malfoy, by contrast, seemed to float up the stairs.

 _Well, it's his house, after all. Who knows how many times he's walked these?_

They kept climbing past the first floor and up to the second one, then passed through a gigantic arched doorway that was missing its door. Harry shivered as he looked down the corridor beyond it. This one was even darker and dustier than the one on the ground floor. He cast a stronger _Lumos_ Charm on his wand and watched as the fingers of light extended down the corridor. They didn't seem to travel that far.

"This is the floor where the murderer was living?" Harry's voice fell into the silence and died.

Malfoy nodded jerkily. Then he whispered, "This way," and led Harry to a door that stood open, but not far enough for Harry to see into the room. He twitched his head. Harry pushed it open the rest of the way.

There was a bed bigger than any of the ones at Hogwarts standing there, covered with thick curtains of rich, sky-blue brocade. Harry cast a spell that, this time, would hang as a light from the ceiling. Then he stepped forwards and began to prowl slowly around the room.

He had to admit there were signs someone had lived here, although he didn't know for sure that they went back to the time when Narcissa would have died. There were footprints in the dust, so many that in some places the floor was almost clean. Harry bent close to the bed and saw a dent in the mattress. Someone had slept in this same place for a long time. Harry shivered.

He turned, and found that Malfoy had vanished. He frowned. "Malfoy?"

"What?"

Harry jumped, cursed, and turned around. "Don't _do_ that, will you? Walk like a fucking normal person!"

Malfoy gave the first smile Harry had seen on his face since Malfoy came to his office to beg for help. It was narrow and self-mocking, but Harry would take it. "Sorry. There are passages in the walls, you know. I think it might have been how that murderer came up on Mother unseen. I took one that runs around the side of the room to see if there was any evidence in it, but it looks like the bastard, whoever he was, didn't find that one." He looked at the bed. "Someone was sleeping in that?"

"Yeah. It looks like you were right. I have to check for signs of age and a magical signature, though. When did your mother die?"

Malfoy shivered. He seemed to shrink into himself, and Harry thought he would bolt back into the secret passage. But then he muttered something that sounded like, "I have to face it, don't I?" and straightened up again. "It was three months ago."

"Three months," Harry repeated thoughtfully. "To the day?"

Malfoy stared at him. "No, it's a week and a half past the day. That information matters to the spell?"

"To the kind I cast, it does." Harry had to smile a little at the awed glance Malfoy was casting him. "I invented spells besides the Retrocognition Curse. Not _all_ of them go wrong." He took a step back and focused on the bed and the footprints in the dust. His breathing dropped into one of the meditation patterns that he'd had to practice, and practice, and practice again, until he finally got it right.

Then, and only then, did he gesture with his wand.

" _Gloria dierum,"_ he whispered. It was far from a literal translation of "counting the days," the first incantation he had tried to use, but it was the one that had worked for the spell.

For a moment, the silence grew deeper and deeper, although it seemed to like this spell more than the others. Then the dust shot into the air and rotated, and the dent in the mattress began to glow blue. Harry opened his eyes to watch. Malfoy was utterly still beside him. Harry thought he might be holding his breath.

The dust and the blue light together formed a number: 102. Harry nodded slowly. "The person who slept here was here on the day your mother died," he said. "I can't tell for sure how long he would have been here before that, but we can be sure of this." He shot Malfoy a curious glance. "And the other Aurors really didn't listen when you tried to tell them?"

"None of them could use that spell you have."

"Yes, but I mean, they still could have looked at that bed and seen that someone was sleeping in it." Harry shook his head in disgust. He didn't like his fellow Aurors _much_ , but there were some who were still professionally skilled. Like Ron—

Harry shied away from that thought, and cleared his throat. "What next? Other signs?"

"This way."

Malfoy led the way out of the bedroom, up some more stairs and around a corner. Harry noticed one door that he assumed was the one Malfoy was leading him to, but Malfoy marched past it. Harry reached out and tried to turn the knob. Locked.

"What about this one, Malfoy?"

Malfoy spun around, and for a second, his clothes floated behind him the way Snape's robes used to do. Harry recoiled. Malfoy's eyes were wide and wild, and Harry wouldn't have been surprised if foam had started dribbling from his lips.

"That's _locked_ ," Malfoy said. "You don't go in there. You don't _ever_ go in there."

"All right. I was just thinking that there might be clues—"

"There's something important to me in there. Don't _try to enter it._ "

Harry stepped back as Malfoy loomed close to him. The fire that seemed to burn in him at times was brighter than ever now. His eyes maintained that wild stare, and he brought a sense of cold with him that Harry didn't think was entirely a result of his own fear.

"All right," Harry said soothingly. "I just—are there secret passages that lead into that room, too? Maybe the murderer found them, and the locked door doesn't matter."

Malfoy had already turned and was making his silent way up the corridor. Harry sighed and followed.

* * *

Harry followed Malfoy onto the balcony that he said his mother had fallen from with a faint frown. Honestly, he hadn't found many other clues. It was true that someone had used a bathroom on the day Mrs. Malfoy died, and there was a hairbrush with faint strands caught in it, and someone had stood for what his spell to count moments of passed time said was nearly an hour on a balcony above this one. But none of that proved a murderer.

He'd even suggested to Malfoy that maybe some of those remnants had been his; the hair in the brush looked like his. Malfoy had given him an incredulous stare and said, "They were the murderer's," and then gone on staring until Harry had given up.

This balcony didn't look like the scene of a murder, although Harry had found in his years as an Auror that few places did. It was a plain one for Malfoy Manor, actually, made of the same white stone as the side of the Manor, without any elaborate carvings on the banister or balustrades. There was a stain on the stone that Harry bent over to look at.

"Mother's hand gripped that before she fell."

"It doesn't look like blood."

"It isn't. It's just the stain of her holding on."

Harry said nothing, but continued to study the stain skeptically. When he cast the Counting Days Spell, again it told him that it had been there for 102 days. But Harry still needed to know what the stain was _made_ of before he decided it was from the murder, as Malfoy insisted. The trouble was, the dark flecks in the shape of, perhaps, half a handprint didn't look like anything he was familiar with. Not dirt, not blood, not sweat.

 _Not that sweat would have lasted this long anyway,_ Harry thought, taking a step back so that he could view the mark from the side, and have a look at the place Mrs. Malfoy had fallen. _And the Aurors would have found blood._

The dark mark still wouldn't come clear, and Harry was no longer sure that it looked like half a handprint, anyway. He turned his gaze on the garden below—

And winced. Right beneath the balcony was a fence that looked as if it was made of sharpened stalks of bamboo. They pointed straight up, and apparently provided a sort of climbing trellis for some of the garden's flowers. The ground below was a riot of untended green, so Harry could no longer say exactly what the flowers had been.

"Malfoy?"

"Down here, Potter."

 _How did he get down there so fast?_ Harry thought in irritation as he bent over the side of the balcony. _Probably more bloody secret passages._

Malfoy was standing near the fence, his head bowed. Harry cleared his throat. "Your mother fell right on top of the stakes?"

"Yes," Malfoy whispered, his voice tiny. His word sounded more like a blowing wind.

Harry swallowed. It would have been a nasty way to die. He'd dealt with a Muggleborn Dark wizard who used sharpened bamboo like that on one of his cases. Apparently he'd picked up the idea from Muggle movies.

 _Nasty, but fairly instant,_ Harry thought, trying to place himself in the head of a murderer who would have killed a woman years after the war, a woman who had saved Harry's own life and done no harm in that time. _Too instant? Did he intend to do something else, but he was afraid of someone catching him?_

"If you used the spell you invented…"

"I am _not_ casting the Retrocognition Curse," Harry snarled in irritation. Yes, it would form precise images of the past crime, one of the reasons he had invented it, but there was no telling what it would do to Malfoy.

"I'm not afraid," Malfoy whispered, his head bowed. "As far as I'm concerned, the worst has already happened to me."

"Yeah, you say that, but you can't _know_ it."

Malfoy was silent. Harry turned back to look at the huge, folding glass windows that led out onto the balcony from the Malfoy parents' bedroom. It was hard to see how someone could have come up behind Mrs. Malfoy without her hearing them. True, the bedroom had lush carpet, but not thick enough to prevent the sound of footfalls. Harry had seen that for sure when he walked across it, while Malfoy hovered outside the door.

That left…

Harry's glance went back to the higher balcony where his spell had confirmed that someone had stood. A spell cast from there? A weapon? Of course, a murderer would have had ample time to retrieve the weapon before Aurors arrived.

Harry shook his head. Too many unknowns, and too many variables that he couldn't narrow down because it had been so long since the crime was committed.

The Retrocognition Curse would have told him the truth at once, but Harry wasn't about to expose someone else to the death and mayhem that he had already spread too much of. Instead, he closed his eyes to gather his strength and then cast the second most powerful of the charms he had invented.

The magic spread out around him. When Harry opened his eyes, the mark on the balcony railing was softly glowing, and he turned around to see that certain portions of the house were, as well. Harry relaxed. There. He knew what his own magical signature looked like, and he would get Malfoy to separate out his and his mother's. Then they would be able to see the magical signature of the murderer.

He looked more closely at the mark. It still refused to make any sense to him, except that maybe it did look like half a handprint, with the actual light on it. The magical signature here showed a faint silvery-blue. Harry's own was a violet that had swirls of red mixed in.

He looked over the balcony, and hid a wince as he saw a brilliant green staining the bamboo fence below. That was probably Mrs. Malfoy's, but he would have to get Malfoy to confirm for certain, and to tell Harry what his own looked like.

"Malfoy?" he called.

"What?"

Harry jumped. Malfoy had apparently taken his secret passage back to the balcony again. He turned around with a scowl. "Can you tell me what this mark is? And what the murderer's magical signature looked like? We'll have to separate it from yours."

Malfoy bent his face close to the mark, ostentatiously still not touching Harry, who leaned back to give him room. "A handprint," Malfoy said at last. "I don't know what material it's made of, though."

Harry sighed. That was a dead end. But then again, the smudge of the handprint was a minor mystery compared to being able to see the places the murderer's signature had touched. "Well, come on, then. Let's see if the imprint on the bed and the rest of it matches the glow here."

Malfoy glanced at him weirdly as he straightened up. "I did come to you in the first place because of the Retrocognition Spell," he murmured. "I think you're taking what happened to the people who asked you to use it too seriously. You have no _proof_ it was a result of the spell."

 _See, Harry?_ said what sounded like Hermione's voice in his head. _Even Malfoy can see reason. You have to—_

Harry shut the voice away, and shrugged at Malfoy. "Lead on."

Malfoy sighed loudly, and glided away in front of him. Harry followed him, while mentally considering something. Malfoy had said before that the stain was just the mark of his mother holding onto the balcony.

That it glowed with a different signature than the bamboo fence made…

Well, it made Harry a bit concerned.


	2. Chapter 2

Thank you for all the reviews!

 _Part Two_

"This has to be the murderer's magical signature."

Harry straightened up from the bed that held the imprint, nodding slowly. The soft blue-silver glow highlighted the bed, footprints that made their way through the dust, and doorknobs throughout the house. Malfoy had led him through room after room that showed the signature of the murderer, to the point that Harry thought it was incredible the Aurors hadn't found _any_ evidence.

But he needed to say something else.

"Malfoy."

"Yes?" Malfoy, who had been staring at the far wall with vacant eyes as if imagining his mother still alive, started and turned to Harry.

Harry spoke as carefully as he could. The last thing he wanted was to alienate the one person who could tell him the truth. "I noticed the blue-silver glow from behind that locked door as well."

Malfoy immediately straightened and focused on him in a way that was frankly creepy. Harry would have backed off on discussing this if he could, but he didn't have much choice. "I told you not to concern yourself with that, Potter."

"And I'm telling you that I have to, or I'm not doing my job properly." Harry folded his arms, incidentally putting his hand closer to his wand.

"No one could have gone in there. There's nothing in there."

"Earlier you said there was something important to you. Make up your mind."

Malfoy said nothing, didn't aim his wand, but Harry gasped as a cold curse swept through him. He actually felt his heart stutter in pain, as if he was outside and standing naked in front of an approaching blizzard. He fell over with his hands on his chest. Malfoy came and loomed next to him, in absolute silence.

Harry focused on him as much as he could over the frantic booming of his heart trying to get back to normal.

"…don't go in there…nothing in there…"

"Secret passages," Harry finally gasped, with an effort he was surprised he could make. He finally let go of his chest and flipped over on hands and knees, regarding Malfoy warily.

"There are none that lead into that room."

"Are you sure? Sometimes in these old houses, passages have been built that even the owners don't know about—"

"I am absolutely and completely sure." Malfoy bent until he was staring into Harry's eyes, and Harry felt as though someone was trying to use Legilimency on him. He turned his head away, refusing eye contact, and thought Malfoy eased back a little. "There is nothing you can do and nothing you can say that will make me change my mind."

"Even if looking in that room would help us catch your mother's murderer?"

Malfoy didn't respond. Harry opened his eyes and found that he'd disappeared from the room, the way he sometimes did without warning. Harry stood and leaned on the wall until the shaking disappeared from his legs. "Malfoy?"

The bastard was not only out of sight, he was now using some spell that made his voice sound as if it was coming from several different places at once. "I don't want you touching my room, Potter. The secrets in there need to rest undisturbed. _Promise me._ "

The echo ran up and down Harry's spine as if it had feet. He wrapped his arms around his stomach, still shuddering. "It's your room? Your bedroom?"

"…Yes. My place to sleep."

Harry thought it was in an odd place compared to the bedrooms in the rest of the Manor, but he ground his teeth and carried through. "Okay. I promise."

Silence.

"Malfoy? You never did show me something with your magical signature, so that we could compare it to the murderer's and your mother's."

Silence.

"Malfoy?"

* * *

Harry sat, in silence, on the dusty steps that led down to the front doors of Malfoy Manor, his hands over his face.

Malfoy had vanished utterly. Harry had cast all the tracking spells he knew that ought to find him or lure him out of hiding, including some that he had invented himself. Nothing had worked. Then Harry had tried to leave Malfoy Manor.

The doors were barred to him with curses that made his flesh turn green with poison when he rested a hand on the doors, and others sprang up and surrounded him in a cocoon of flames when he tried to Apparate. Harry knew death well, and he knew that he would have burned to death if he'd persisted.

There'd been a time, a few months ago, when he honestly might have welcomed that. He'd been reeling under the realization of how many deaths he'd been responsible for, and he'd pushed away Ron and Hermione because they kept trying to tell him it wasn't his fault when Harry _knew_ it was. And the Auror Department had reassigned him, and he hadn't wanted to quit, as he once would have, and engage in inventing new spells, his true passion, because what if he accidentally made another one like the Retrocognition Curse?

But now, he wanted to live. If only because he missed his friends and wanted to speak to them one more time.

Harry lifted his head, and glanced around the manor, and shivered. He never would have thought that Mrs. Malfoy had only been dead three months. The darkness, the silence, the dust, the cold, made it seem much longer than that.

"How do I leave?" he asked aloud. He was sure that Malfoy was nearby and listening to him, for all that he refused to show himself.

"Solve my mother's murder."

Those were the first words he'd heard from that bastard in hours. Harry nodded and shifted his balance on the steps, hissing a little as pain stabbed up into him from the edge of the step he'd been sitting on. "And how do I do that, when you won't let me look into that locked room?"

"You know how."

"I _can't_ use the fucking curse, Malfoy!" Harry snapped, standing up and glaring into the latest corner the voice had come from. Not that it would matter, since it would have moved into another one by now. "You have no idea what it will do to you!"

Malfoy laughed coldly, the voice booming and echoing and reminding Harry too much of Voldemort's laugh. "Potter, the worst thing that could happen to me happened the day my mother died. I could vanish out of existence now, I could wake up being tortured in that Muggle hell Tracey told me about once, and it would be better."

"You don't _know_ that!"

"Yes, I do." Malfoy's voice softened abruptly, strangely. "Use the Retrocognition Spell, Potter. See what happened. It's the only way that will free you, the only way that will free _me_. I still have no idea if my mother—I think she was murdered, but I have to admit I don't _know_. The other Aurors couldn't find anything. You can't tell me for sure without prying into secrets I refuse to expose to you. Use the spell."

Malfoy's voice faded. When Harry asked, "Or else you won't let me out?", he didn't really expect an answer, and he received none.

Harry sat with his head between his hands for a few seconds, concentrating on his breathing. This was his greatest fear. He _had_ to use the spell, had to choose between imprisonment, maybe death, for himself…

And some unknown fate for someone else.

On the other hand, if Malfoy was willing to risk that fate, then what did Harry have to lose?

 _My conscience,_ Harry thought, as he stood up and trekked heavily towards the balcony where Narcissa Malfoy had met her own fate. _Just that._

* * *

Harry stood on the balcony and stared at the green glow on the bamboo fence. It hadn't faded. Neither had the silvery-blue magical signature that clung to the balcony railing and the thing that might or might not be a handprint.

He closed his eyes and reached out with his magic in the dreaded direction that he hadn't stretched it in years.

The throb of something that felt like a reawakened muscle cut through him. Harry swallowed and lifted his wand. His hand almost seemed to move of its own accord, and the syllables of the Retrocognition Curse tumbled from his lips.

" _Retro videre peto._ "

The magic tore itself out of him in the long, slow spiral that it always felt as if it was turning into, and Harry opened his eyes.

There was a pinpoint of brilliant silver light hanging in the air in front of him. As he watched, it widened, and opened like a door, and the vision of the past that had happened here one hundred and two days ago began to play out in front of him.

Narcissa Malfoy stood on the balcony, clipping vines of roses that grew around the railing with a pair of shears. Harry blinked. The house looked well-cared for. Did she have the allegiance of the house-elves after all, then? Then how had it got so neglected in the few months since she died?

"Mother!"

Narcissa turned her head and raised a hand, waving. The vision widened to encompass the balcony where the murderer's magical signature had blazed. Malfoy stood there, a happy smile on his face as he watched his mother.

Harry's throat was pounding hard enough to choke him. _He did kill her. He wanted—he wanted what? He wanted to be caught? He wanted someone else to see? Why in the world would he find someone who could arrest him, the one person who might be able to discover that he'd lied?_

Narcissa turned back to clipping the roses. Malfoy, with a mischievous smile on his face, took a step back and turned as if he was going into the house. Then he spun around and launched a prank spell at her.

 _A prank spell._ Harry recognized it by the shape of its flight, like an arrow; he couldn't see the color in the silvery mist that the curse made of the memory. It was meant to explode above someone's head and scatter lights and noise and color, like a firework, that would confuse and startle them.

 _How could he have murdered her with a prank spell?_

Narcissa started and flung herself sideways. The shears she held jabbed into her hand, and she slipped. She had already been leaning over the railing to cut one of the stubborn rose vines; now she pinwheeled over after them. Harry heard a shrill scream and ran to the edge of the balcony. The vision moved with him, and showed Narcissa impaled on the bamboo fence. It was over so quickly that Harry was left, shaking, with the vision not finished yet. He wondered if it would linger past the end of the moment, longer than it usually did, because of his own shock.

Then a terrible scream rang from the balcony overhead. Harry jumped and turned. Malfoy's face was a mask of horror. He turned and ran from the balcony, pounding down steps from the sound. Harry wondered for a confused moment why he didn't just use the same secret passages that he had to startle Harry.

Then he was on the balcony next to Harry, a trembling figure, leaning over the edge of the railing. His hand caught on one of the rose vines left whipping back and forth by his mother's fall. Blood poured from his palm to stain the railing. Malfoy reached out, yearning, with magic. Harry glanced down in the vision to see the wandless power lift Narcissa's motionless body slightly, but do nothing else.

The vision winked out, and left Harry standing there, panting and dazed. The mark on the balcony railing was explained, at least, he thought. It _was_ blood, preserved by the magic that Malfoy had been channeling through his body, burning under the skin.

But that didn't make any more sense out of the vision than just watching it did. Malfoy _knew_ his mother's death had been an accident. Why call it a murder? Why summon Harry to investigate it and insist that he wanted to watch the scene again through the Retrocognition Curse? He had _been_ there.

"I didn't remember it well enough."

" _Bastard_ ," Harry was already spitting as he turned around. Malfoy stood behind him, shining almost the way he had in the vision, his eyes fixed on the bamboo fence.

Malfoy stirred a little and glanced at him. "I meant it when I said a murderer had stayed in the house. I didn't—I didn't remember what had happened. I thought the prank spell I used actually hit her, not just startled her. I would have killed her even if I didn't mean to. It made sense to refer to myself as a murderer."

"But you lied about so much else," Harry said flatly. His heart was still pounding with a combination of shock over what the curse had shown him and the shock of Malfoy reappearing like that. "You said that someone had stayed in a room. You didn't show me your own magical signature. You didn't _tell_ me what you knew. What the hell, Malfoy? How could you not remember what happened? Why didn't you just put the memory in a Pensieve and view it again, if you weren't sure?"

"A Pensieve was beyond my reach."

"Did you just bring me here to waste my time?"

"No." Malfoy turned and looked at him. "I meant what I said about my memory letting me down, and me not being able to use a Pensieve. Go and open that locked room, Potter. You have my full permission now. You'll understand when you do."

"Why don't you just open it yourself? I'm bloody sick of your riddles, Malfoy!"

"Thank you for what you did. I had to know."

Malfoy Apparated away. Harry stared at the silent balcony—Malfoy had even learned to Apparate without a telltale noise, the flashy bastard—and whirled away with a curse.

Fine. He _would_ open that door. And fuck Malfoy if he cared about the damage to Malfoy property.

Harry stormed down the stairs and straight towards the door that still glowed, weakly, with the blue-silver light of Malfoy's magical signature. He aimed his wand and allowed all the pent-up anger of the last twelve hours to surge through him.

The Blasting Curse tore the door off its hinges. Harry charged into the room, which was a tiny one, only really big enough to hold a chair and a mirror—

And stopped.

Slumped in the chair was a dead, partially skeletonized body with a knife in its heart and telltale blond hair.

* * *

"I'm afraid so, Auror Potter. There's every sign that Mr. Malfoy killed himself the same day that the Aurors ended up finding Mrs. Malfoy dead."

Harry stared at his hands and said nothing. Robards sighed a little and nudged the steaming cup of tea on the desk towards him. He, as Head Auror, had agreed that Harry shouldn't take any more ordinary cases, but now he watched him with open worry.

"Then I—I saw and spoke with—"

"A ghost, yes. None of the other Aurors saw him." _They ignored me. It was like they couldn't hear me, couldn't see me_ , said Malfoy's voice in Harry's head. Harry closed his eyes. "It may be that he finally became strong enough to contact you because he became so consumed with guilt and grief over the way his mother had died. He thought he murdered her."

Harry nodded slowly. He remembered the lack of new footprints in the dust, the overgrown gardens of the Manor, Malfoy insisting that Harry open doors, how he had "Apparated" or "used secret passages" to get around. And the way he had seemed to dim, as if he was about to fade out of sight, when Harry made some suggestions.

 _I meant what I said about my memory letting me down, and me not being able to use a Pensieve._

Ghosts could fade over time, Harry knew that. That was the reason Malfoy's memory had become tattered—that or he couldn't stand to face up to what he might have thought happened. He'd brought Harry in because of the Retrocognition Curse, all right. He wanted to see a true vision of the past from something other than his original angle. And—it had worked.

 _It has a curse attached. It always caused pain and death for whoever asked me to use it. I didn't know that when I invented the spell._

 _You think I'm afraid of pain or death, Potter? I'm not afraid of anything next to my fear of not bringing my mother's killer to justice.  
_  
 _There are excellent reasons he wasn't afraid of pain or death,_ Harry thought, and swallowed. _And he really did want to know if he had killed his mother. That was the thing he needed help to face._

"Auror Potter."

Harry looked up. Robards was still bending towards him, his eyes clear and—well, concerned. Harry blinked. He had been sure all his colleagues despised him for using a spell that turned out to be a curse without researching it more thoroughly. "Yes, sir?"

"Listen to me," Robards said, quietly. "You helped put Mr. Malfoy's ghost to rest. He and his mother had both died long before you became involved with this case. You did a _good_ thing. Stop flagellating yourself for something that I suspect most people wouldn't have thought of."

Harry flushed, but said, "If I put his spirit to rest, why didn't he come back and tell me so? Most ghosts would."

"This is Malfoy. What was he like in life?"

Harry sighed a little. "I was cursing him for being a bastard a minute before he faded."

"Exactly." Robards reached out and placed a heavy, anchoring hand on Harry's wrist. "And this is something that I just realized you might not have known. I didn't know why you were punishing yourself so hard, and then I thought that perhaps no one told you that we found Brown alive."

Harry stared at him. "What?"

"Lavender Brown? The woman you thought your curse murdered? Alive and happy, Auror Potter." Robards tilted his head. "She did get attacked the night that she disappeared, but she survived and hid until she was strong enough to take on her enemies. Your Retrocognition Curse _helped_ her, Potter. And honestly, the other deaths that resulted from it? I don't think the 'curse' influenced them, either."

Harry could hear his breathing getting hoarse. "But—one committed suicide and the other attacked Death Eaters—"

"Natural consequences of their grief." Robards tightened his hand. "Not your spell. Why would you think it was?"

Harry swallowed. "I—it was a new spell, untried, and some of the other Aurors suggested—"

"I wish I had known." Robards's voice grew cool. "I would have disciplined them." He shook his head. "Listen to me, Auror Potter. I was willing to give you time to work through your feelings about the spell and stay out of the field for a little while. You wouldn't have been very effective on most cases anyway, as messed-up as you were. But this grief and guilt over something that was _not your fault_ have gone on long enough. I will deal with other Aurors' comments as they happen. But you? You isolated _yourself_. This is enough. You dealt well with the Malfoy case, and gave peace to someone who desperately needed it, and ensured that his body will be buried. Now it is time to get over this grief and start seeing a Mind-Healer. You require one."

Harry closed his eyes. He felt the way Malfoy must have felt, when he was doing his best to cope with the idea that he might have murdered his mother. Harry could hardly face up either to the revelation that he might have driven himself away from others or that he might be able to come back to his Auror career.

"One more thing." Robards leaned back and pulled out a bound scroll. "Draco Malfoy sent this to his solicitor the day that he committed suicide."

Harry opened the scroll, wondering if it was some kind of generic letter to whoever helped the ghost find peace. But no, it had his name near the top. Malfoy must have been planning even then to seek Harry out and have him help Malfoy view the past.

And then Harry hit the rest of the document and sat up. "No—I, I _can't_ have inherited Malfoy Manor."

"All the Malfoys are dead." Robards looked ruthless. "None of their family is left. Even then Draco Malfoy thought you would be able to help solve this case and bring about peace, and he wanted you to have some kind of reward. Deal with it, Auror Potter." He paused near the door of Harry's office, and added over his shoulder, "As I shall be expecting you to deal with a great number of other things from now on."

Harry just kept on staring at the will. Near the bottom, beneath Malfoy's signature, was a single line in a softer, more blurred handwriting: _I pay my debts._

Harry swallowed, and closed his eyes, and if he wept a little, he wasn't about to tell anyone. Then he stood slowly.

He hadn't spoken to Ron or Hermione in months. He hadn't socialized with his fellow Aurors in longer. Long before that, he'd given up work on new spells and on doing anything but deeply diving into cases and feeling responsible for—things that he might not have needed to feel responsible for.

 _I pay my debts._

Maybe it was time, finally, for Harry to do the same.

 **The End.**


End file.
